


The Long Madness

by hammer



Category: True Detective
Genre: Canon Compliant, Carcosa (True Detective Season 1), Character Study, Deranged Enlightenment, Drug Use, Hallucinations, references to Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:48:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27205448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hammer/pseuds/hammer
Summary: Two moments inside Reggie Ledoux's mind: while walking around the compound with his mask and his machete, and right before his death.
Kudos: 6





	The Long Madness

**Author's Note:**

> Reggie Ledoux was a dirtbag and a monster. His only redeeming qualities were that he got his brains blown out almost immediately and that he was played to perfection by Charles Halford, whom I love. We know very little of Ledoux, so I tried imagining what it might be like inside his head. A small attempt at expanding the Carcosa mythology. Rated to match the show.
> 
> No mentions of pedophilia in this fic, but very graphic depiction of intravenous drug use.

" _Ne raillons pas les fous; leur folie dure plus longtemps que la nôtre.... Voila toute la différence._ "

–The Repairer of Reputations, Robert W. Chambers

Reggie didn’t need an excuse to test his batches personally, although, it was a matter of pride, really. He hadn’t gotten his reputation as a cook by releasing mediocre products into the world. So, he wrapped his belt around his left bicep, slipping the end through the buckle and pulling jerkily, tightening it until it pinched his skin – all part of the ritual.

He pressed the tip of one thick finger to the bulging veins on the inside of his elbow, picking the best one. He took the prepared syringe between his fingers, deftly holding it with one hand – a skill he'd honed a long time ago – and brought the needle to his skin at the right angle; the wrong one would make it more likely for him to miss the vein, and he wasn't in the mood for poking around.

The small prick barely registered. He pulled the plunger back, just a tad. A thin ribbon of blood rushed in, undulating, and mushrooming at the back of the barrel. _Beautiful_ , Reggie thought, with a thin smile. It meant he hit the vein.

He pushed the plunger in; the red-tinged liquid disappeared inside his vein. He released the belt, let his head fall back, and waited, fingers off the empty syringe, which rested painlessly against the length of his forearm, its needle still inside him.

He felt it first in the back of his neck; tendrils of pleasure crept up it, as if sparking from his spine and spreading to his brain, cloying it with a surge of those sweet, precious neurotransmitters. Every atom of every cell drew closer together, nice and snug and _right_ , making him more real.

The light that came from the fluorescent bulbs above suddenly became too bright, and for a dizzying moment, the room pulsed around him with the rhythm of his racing heartbeat. He closed his eyes. He could taste the drugs in the back of his throat and on his tongue; he could even smell them. Colors exploded behind his eyelids, from fiery crimson to bright orange, and then to blessed gold.

As expected, the meth was first-class; The Iron Crusaders would be pleased with their product and they’d pay up. The LSD was good too, and blended together with the meth in careful proportions, it helped lift the veil. The Yellow King would be pleased by that, and _that_ pleased Reggie most of all.

The King had gathered Reggie under the tatters of his golden robe and washed the shame off of him a long time ago. Reggie had shown him his real face and the King had embraced it. He _knew_ Reggie, accepted him and loved him like no one had before. If he worked well, played his part, Reggie would be rewarded. He’d be given the honor of helping with the King’s mark again, the chance to be part of something significant.

Satisfied, Reggie rid himself of the syringe and the belt.

He’d had enough run-ins with gators and snakes around the compound to err on the safe side. Firearms weren’t allowed in the lab, so Reggie took the machete from its spot by the heavy door. He swung the hefty bar that lay across it and walked into the open humid air.

As he walked from the lab to the shack, he caught a new scent. A scent he shouldn’t have been able to perceive through his gas mask. It was a sickening blend of blood, gunpowder and burned hair, new and familiar all at once, like a memory buried deep resurfacing out of the blue. Despite the stifling heat of the Louisiana summer, a prickle of cold slithered up his spine, settling in the nape of his neck like a warning.

He stopped, the hose of his mask swaying lazily in the breeze. He looked around.

He saw nothing but the lush liquescent green. Heard nothing but the near-deafening song of the cicadas. But he felt it. He felt time circling in, inexorable, coiling around him like a snake, carrying with it unnamed dread. Thing was, Reggie didn't feel fear. Not anymore. He understood it was only a tool, something to be inflicted upon others for his own ends.

He let the feeling of foreboding sink into his marrow like poison. Reggie had lived with poison inside him all his life, had been born to it. He’d tamed it. Manufactured it. Spread it around. This much more of it wouldn’t change anything.

He resumed his stroll, unafraid.

**

Reggie was a bit startled at first, when the cops got the drop on him. But then that old-and-new smell of blood and gunpowder returned, and the calm Reggie carried with him everywhere returned also, stronger with every step he took towards the yard.

**

Reggie didn’t feel the pebbles that dug into his knees as he knelt in the dirt, hands cuffed behind his back. He looked carefully at the thin man before him for the first time and recognized him. He could tell by the length of his shadows that he was a priest too, here to partake in his blessing.

“It’s time, isn’t it? The black star?” Reggie asked.

“Shut the fuck up!”

Reggie ignored the outburst. “The black stars rise.” It was a fact.

“Why the antlers?” was the thin man’s response. Reggie smiled at the man’s need for understanding: no one could unsee the Yellow King’s mark, but only a special few would seek out the meaning.

Dewall stepped out the lab at that moment, but Reggie didn’t care about that. He thought of Dora, kneeling with her hands tied on the cane fields then, like him now on this ground already hallowed by the King; Reggie wouldn’t require a blindfold, though. He would meet his blessing with his eyes wide open.

“I know what happens next. I saw you in my dream. You’re in Carcosa now. With me, he sees you,” Reggie intoned with utter certainty. The smell was overpowering now, blood, gunpowder, burned hair, woven into the very air around them. “You’ll do this again. Time is a flat circle,” he added.

The man yelled for him to shut up, either unwilling to hear the truth aloud or too distracted by Dewall. It didn’t bother Reggie though, because he could tell this man was already on the cusp of the truth. He could see how close his mask was to completely dissolving, showing a dark soul, corrosive at the edges, like Reggie’s own.

A chilled wind rose as the twin suns dipped below the horizon, lengthening the shadows.

Once the Yellow King had escaped and risen above the loop, he’d pull Reggie out of his poisonous cycle on his next go-round – the pain, the getting high, the fucking, the killing – on and on, again and again. This perpetual deja vu. This long, drawn out madness.

The vortex of time opened up above.

Reggie could clearly see them now, the black stars... all around him, descending on him, like in his dreams. “Black stars... They’re coming from the sky,” he recited to himself quietly, marveling at the towers of Carcosa just beyond.

The other man, the one called Marty, burst through the door, stomping towards him. From the corner of his eye, Reggie saw the man’s soul, bright and righteous and utterly uninteresting. Just a puppet sleep-walking through a dream, under the delusion that he was dealing Reggie his end.

Just as the Yellow King had promised, it was easy to let go.

And Reggie welcomed it wholeheartedly.

**Author's Note:**

> Translation from French: "Don't laugh at the fools; their madness lasts longer than ours .... That's the only difference. "


End file.
